Joe Biden’s call for more national policing reforms and oversight in the wake of the death of George Floyd has created a fissure with law enforcement groups
Joe Biden has long prided himself on being a union-friendly Democrat with a good relationship with rank-and-file cops. But Biden’s call for more national policing reforms and oversight in the wake of the death of George Floyd — and the perception that he hasn’t shown enough solidarity with law enforcement amid the ensuing nationwide protests and unrest — have created a fissure with law enforcement groups, leaving many who once supported him frustrated by what they regard as political posturing by their one-time ally.
“Clearly, he’s made a lot of changes the way candidates do during the primary process, but he kept moving left and fell off the deep end,” said Bill Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations, the umbrella organization for Police Benevolent Association chapters. “For Joe Biden, police are shaking their heads because he used to be a stand-up guy who backed law enforcement,” Johnson said. “But it seems in his old age, for whatever reason, he’s writing a sad final chapter when it comes to supporting law enforcement.” As the two presidential candidates confront one of the most racially combustible moments in recent history, they are taking decidedly different tacks. President Donald Trump has issued a full-throated call to restore “law and order” — even threatening military action to beat back violent protests. Biden has tiptoed around the defense of law enforcement, focusing instead on the need for reforms amid deep-seated racial disparities still plaguing the nation. In his first public speech in months, Biden on Tuesday focused on race, highlighted the rights of protesters and offered up police reforms. He made only a passing mention of police officers. The Trump campaign criticized him for failing to mention police killed and wounded amid the unrest. Though many police tend to lean to the right politically, the criticism from the National Association of Police Organizations is new. NAPO endorsed Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 because of Biden’s presence on the ticket, Johnson said. But the Obama-Biden reelection in 2012 marked a watershed political year in the relationship between law enforcement and the Democratic Party. More than eight months before Obama’s re-election, the Black Lives Matter movement began in response to the shooting death of a black Florida teenager, Trayvon Martin, by a self-appointed neighborhood watchman. Black Lives Matter made police brutality, systemic racism and the 1994 crime bill top issues for progressives in the 2016 and 2020 Democratic presidential primaries. While under fire from the left, police increasingly became more Republican, said Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police and former in-house lobbyist for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who worked closely with Biden on the crime bill and other legislation. “There are two evolutions in two directions. On law-and-order issues, Biden was right of center: the ‘94 crime bill, the Brady Law and enhanced penalties. But as time has gone by, his positions have moderated, moderated, moderated to where we are today, where he would not be considered a law-and-order guy in the sense that law enforcement sees it,” Pasco said. “Also, as time has gone by, the law-enforcement community — especially the rank and file — has become far more conservative. Today, the FOP and other labor groups are far-less open to addressing gun-control issues, things that traditionally they supported and that Biden worked very closely and successfully with them on.” For instance, Pasco said, law enforcement is less likely to be engaged in supporting gun control, which was once more popular with police. An assault-weapons ban was included in the ’94 crime bill along with other legislation that gave the federal government more power to investigate a “pattern or practice” of local law enforcement abuses. But the 1994 crime bill also serves as the poster child for the mass-incarceration movement that swept states, and Biden has struggled to win support with progressives and young voters of color as a result. Many want to see more contrition from him over the bill’s role in popularizing mass incarceration, an issue that cropped up again in an interview two weeks ago with a black radio show host, leading Biden to say “you ain’t black” for supporting Trump. Biden later apologized.
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